Niantic
Pokemon Go fansite The Silph Road found out that the last Community Day event boosted the rate of catching a shiny Pikachu.
The game’s first Community Day was on January 20 and for three hours granted players double XP, 3 hour lures, and the chance to catch Pikachu that knew the move Surf. Researchers for The Silph Road observed a huge increase in the number of Shiny Pokemon spawns observed in the wild.
They found that within three hours of the event, 2,159 Pikachu sightings were reported. Out of them, 95 were shiny. This gave them a rate of approximately one in 22.7. Within a 95% confidence interval, the ranged is between one in 19 and one in 28.3.
The website notes that every unique wild Pikachu encounter has the same probability of seeing a shiny Pikachu. Odds on the next encounter are not affected by previous encounters.
To illustrate how likely you are to to get a shiny Pikachu, the website created a table of how the chance of getting a shiny Pikachu changes as you encounter Pikachu. They used the hypothetical rarest 1 in 28.3 chance for the table.
# of Pikachu – Chance to Get a Shiny
28 – 63.5%
50 – 83.5%
100 – 97.3%
125 – 99%
After seeing over 28 Pikachu, you get close to guaranteeing a shiny Pikachu sighting. However, a shiny Pikachu will never be completely guaranteed regardless of the number you see.
The Silph Road also notes that due to the smaller data set collected during the brief three hour window, further testing for potentially influential variables such as weather boosts were not feasible to conduct. However, they didn’t collect any variables that were observed to have any obvious effect on shiny rates.
Niantic announced a second Community Day event on February 24, which will feature the rare Pokemon Dratini with an exclusive move along with 3 hour lures and triple the stardust upon catching a Pokemon. We’ll have to see if shiny rates increase for Dratini.
Shiny Pokemon are extremely rare Pokemon with an alternate color palette. According to Eurogamer, they were first introduced to the game in March 2017 with the surprise reveal of gold-colored shiny Magikarp and its evolution, red-colored shiny Gyarados.
Shiny Pikachu were discovered in August 2017 with The Pokemon Company’s “Pikachu Outbreak” event in Yokohama, Japan, according to the publication. They evolve into shiny Raichu. You know when Pikachu and Raichu are shiny because they’re slightly darker.
Wild shiny Pikachu has been found spawning at The Pokemon Company’s “Pikachu Outbreak” event in Yokohama! No word yet on worldwide release!
Last week, 23 new Pokemon from the third generation of Pokemon games were released, including region exclusives Torkoal, Solrock, and Lunatone. From now until February 1, every Egg in Pokemon Go will now hatch into a gen three Pokemon. In addition, Super Incubators are now available for a limited time in the in-game store for 200 Coins, which let you hatch Eggs faster than conventional Egg Incubators.
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